About

$5,081

pledged of $4,000 goal

136

backers

What We Support: Vegan, Organic Products, Gluten-Free Options, Children and Adults with allergies and special diets, the Gastronomically Curious

Our History & Product: In the summer of 2010, after a fruitful trip to the City-Wide Garage Sale for doilies and other dainties, Amelia mentioned that she wanted to start a vegan ice cream parlor. Amelia had developed her own recipe for delicious vegan soft serve in 2008 under the auspices of the Toy Joy café. Soon she was creating exciting new flavors on a weekly basis (Lemon! Peanut butter! Chocolate lavender!) and dreaming of a space of her own, where customers could come and sit and enjoy her creations in a beautiful setting. Valerie was instantly intrigued. She had worked for Austin’s own sweet empire, Amy’s Ice Creams, for two years, assisting in opening in several new locations and managing the new flagship location when it opened. Valerie had since moved on to other creative endeavors, but was itching to have a business of her own. The rest, as they say, is history. Now, after over a year of planning, hoping, and almosts, Sweet Ritual opened in December, 2011 inside of Daily Juice Cafe in the beautiful Hyde Park neighborhood in Austin Texas, with all of your favorite frozen desserts and coffee too!

Austin is Veg-Friendly: Austin was rated as the 8th largest vegetarian-friendly city in the USA by GoVeg.com. Austin is building its reputation as a metropolitan area that can compete against other large cities such as Portland, Seattle, and New York. There are very few venues that serve dairy free ice cream in the South and mid-west, so Sweet Ritual is in a class by itself! We've had customers travel from Washington DC, Nebraska, and Scotland to try our ice cream!

This ice cream machine gives us control on how to sweeten the ice cream (with agave, cane sugar, or stevia), what base we can make it out of (soy, coconut, almond, cashew, macadamia) and even the possibility to put nuts, candies, marshmallows, etc into the mix. For all of you who have asked us for a soy-free or coconut-free or sugar-free option: THINK OF THE POSSIBILITIES!

We will also be able to wholesale our product to area restaurants and bakeries - so you can have a scoop of ice cream at Counter Culture or an ice cream sandwich from Sugar Tooth Bakery. We are also looking at the possibility of shipping pints to restaurants in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.

Keep giving, even after the goal is met. We promise to put it to good use!

Thank You!! For your help and financial support we will be eternally grateful. We have some amazing backer rewards in store for donors - including free ice cream for a year!